Book Marks: Big Fiction, AI, Malaysian Bus Journeys

Lacking material, I put off last week's post. As these things go, I probably should have expected to run smack into a deluge of stuff on books and publishing this week. Who was it that said publishing activities tend to slow down towards the end of the year?

Anyway, this is what cropped up in the past two weeks...

In The New Republic is a review of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature by Dan Sinykin, an assistant professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. A part of it reads...

"As publishers grew far larger—and ever more concerned with the bottom line—the lives of editors and authors transformed. More than ever before, they became cogs in a corporate machine, responsible for growth and returns on investment, necessarily responsive to the whims and demands of capital—and these pressures increasingly showed up in their output."

And how. I'm sure this is increasingly the case as publishers push more books out and the editorial process suffers as a result.

Sinykin and his book are cited in this prediction about the (near) future of books in Esquire. I'm not dismissing it outright, so let's see how many of these come true.

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Over at Observer, writers and publishers weigh in on how to cope with AI. "Reports of companies and individuals using A.I. to spread misinformation, infringe copyright and steal authors' identities have dominated discussions of the technology's role in the books we consume," goes the report. As the technology develops, publishers are finding it harder to detect AI use in submitted work, while writers seem to be thrilled with how AI is supercharging their productivity.

Meanwhile, several editors look at the adoption of AI in publishing and ponder where the tech would fit in the editorial workflow. "While generative AI's current appeal lies in creation, it requires human motivation and direction. This is the kind of briefing and tweaking that editors and publishers historically have done: acquiring, commissioning, copy editing. Our role has included adopting and adapting text to create (or curate) connections with audiences, elevating prose to the best it can be, or the perfect fit for that category."

Not everyone is sanguine about AI. This writer, whose farewell to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has proven premature now that Altman looks set to return as CEO, appears concerned that chatbots at workstations is but a step towards a dystopian post-human future. Also: "Even if we assume that the creation of a superintelligent AI is plausible, let alone desirable, was Altman ever the right man for the job here?"


Also:

• "A bus ticket gets you places. An open heart gets you hidden Malaysian experiences." Lam Ching Fu, author of the developing My Journey By Bus series, is profiled in Options @ The Edge. After covering stopovers in Perak, Penang, Kedah and Perlis in his first book, his second book takes readers from Pahang to Terengganu and Kelantan. In progress is part three, which covers Negeri Sembilan, Melaka and Johor. You gotta hand it to him to embark on such a project. Will it help spur improvements to the bus system? One can hope.
• Malaysia's youngest author? Meet Karen Chew, author of What Can an 8-Year-Old Tell You? While she was only eight when she started writing her book, she had begun to write when she was only about three to four – "first with a diary and later a blog," goes the report. One factor in her achievements has to be how she is schooled. Now we have to wonder just how Herculean efforts would be to get the current national education system to that level where every third or fourth child can write and publish a book at age eight.
• "People have agency. People are going to write what they want to. I'm not here to tell people what they can and cannot write. I'm here to ask them should they be writing that story? And I think more people should ask themselves that." After speaking up on Tillie Cole's problematic dark romance novel, BookTok creator Sat and others who have aired similar views found themselves harassed by fans of the novel. Questions are raised over how taboo themes should be addressed in fiction, specifically the dark romance genre.
• "...the most troubling side effect of #Booktok is how the publishing industry responded to a glut of younger, easily influenced consumers moving deeper into the romance genre. The plan, it seems, to entice and retain these customers was to take the embarrassing bodice-ripping, kilt-clad, flowy-hair heroes off the covers of romance novels and instead churn out aesthetic, minimalist designs." TikTok may be shifting copies, but what if erotica dressed up in YA covers are among those? And if a customer is about to pick a volume of stealthed smut off the shelf, should booksellers intervene?
• Lots have been observed and said about Javier Milei, who's set to be Argentina's next president, so perhaps it's no surprise that the controversial far-right figure is apparently a plagiarist too. El País claims Milei lifted whole passages from an article written by Mexican scientists for his book, which was published in 2020. "Accusations of plagiarism hung over Milei throughout his entire career, whether it be his academic publications, his campaign spots or even his autobiography," the portal adds.
• Could this be one of history's longest-running literary scams? The BBC reports that fake Robert Burns manuscripts "made by a forger in the 1880s, have been fleecing collectors for 140 years." While the counterfeiter was caught and imprisoned in 1893, many of the fakes still circulate. "Genuine Burns manuscripts can fetch tens of thousands of pounds at auction today," the report adds, "so there is cash to be made through the fake papers." How many people have been Burn-ed, I wonder?
• "It's believed Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as a form of introspection rather than for larger public consumption. The entries range from blunt maxims to cogent dissertations, and there is no definitive organization to the work—though some patterns have been identified, with themes organized around Stoic philosophy." Though Meditations may not have been written for a wider audience, this self-help classic has become one of the go-tos for those seeking wisdom and life lessons.
• "My stories, thoughts, and insights are crafted with care, but they must struggle to find their place in a family budget that is under pressure to prioritize where every dollar goes. In this economic climate, choosing between a Netflix subscription and a Patreon pledge is not a matter of preference — it's a hard financial decision for many." Joan Westenberg ponders writing as a career in these trying times.
• "I knew at once that I would say yes—not because I felt any particular sense of confidence but because I was fully committed to trying. There are so few things we can do for the dead; this was something I could do for her." When she died, Rebecca Godfrey was working on a novel about heiress and art collector Peggy Guggenheim. Friend and novelist Leslie Jamison was approached to finish Godfrey's work. Jamison's quest took her on an odyssey of sorts, delving deep into Godfrey's thought processes, the life of the novel's subject, and her friendship with Godfrey.
• Former Huntsville Public Library employee Elissa Myers shares her experiences working at the library with Book Riot. "Her work is less about the book banning–that is there, too–but about what it means to be a queer librarian in a time of unmitigated bigotry, much of which is being directed at public employees in education and libraries."
• "Despite being a nation with a reputation for prudishness about sex, the British don't seem to have any problem reading about it, at least not if you go by the enduring popularity of one the country's most successful writers, Jilly Cooper." Explore Cooper's career, a brief history of the "bonkbuster" (urh), and the British affair with raunchy novels.
• "There's a reason why Medieval art is particularly, well, weird. While paintings and sculptures that remain from most other periods in history were generally produced by trained artists, the illuminated manuscripts made in Medieval times were often authored by monks and tradespeople, who weren’t necessarily following artistic conventions of the era." Can't get enough of the @WeirdMedieval Twitter account? The book is now out.
• "Hubert Seipel, an award-winning film-maker and author, admitted receiving support for his work on two books charting the Russian leader's rise to power and offering portrayals described as sympathetic to him." A German publisher has stopped selling books by Seipel after an investigation revealed he received payments from companies linked to an oligarch close to Russian president Vladimir Putin.